Gillian Cal­iste

Artiste and en­ter­tain­er Ri­car­do “Dad­dy Chi­nee” Melville re­mem­bers splash­ing hap­pi­ly dur­ing school va­ca­tions in the clear, warm wa­ters of Spey­side in To­ba­go where his moth­er, Lu­cille, and her fam­i­ly were from. He al­so re­called the bar­be­cues, baked fish and wild meat his pa­ter­nal Chi­nese grand­fa­ther and un­cles would serve up at their fam­i­ly cook­out “wars”.

Hail­ing from a mul­ti­cul­tur­al her­itage that cap­tures the very essence of T&T, it seemed on­ly nat­ur­al for him to sing his com­po­si­tion We are One which won him the 2023 Chut­ney So­ca Monarch (CSM) crown on Feb­ru­ary 17.

De­scribed by show pro­mot­er George Singh as the first non-In­do Trinida­di­an to cop the ti­tle, Melville penned the na­tion-build­ing song to­geth­er with mu­si­cian Lewis “Tem­po” Rowans af­ter re­flect­ing on the pan­dem­ic, the fragili­ty of life and how blessed T&T was and land­ed the his­toric win.

Melville re­cent­ly told Sun­day Guardian that high­light­ing the top­ic of uni­ty de­spite T&T’s di­verse cul­tures in the Rishi Gayadeen-pro­duced song in a post-pan­dem­ic time helped give him the edge over his fel­low com­peti­tors.

“I want­ed to con­cen­trate on the pos­i­tive things about the coun­try. I al­ways come orig­i­nal and cre­ate my own melody. I knew I had a very strong con­tender. The lyri­cal con­tent was very strong for the com­pe­ti­tion,” he said.

The 49-year-old artiste who has gained the ti­tle of “The Xross Over King” for his ver­sa­til­i­ty in singing across the gen­res of so­ca, chut­ney, chut­ney so­ca, parang so­ca and reg­gae over his 25-plus year ca­reer and who has come in third in the CSM for the last two years, pulled out all the stops on the night of the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed fi­nals.

Af­ter an in­tro­duc­tion of Machel Mon­tano’s Re­al Uni­ty cho­rus by mem­bers of a march­ing band com­plete with tas­sa and steel­pan, Melville emerged in a dap­per red, white and sil­ver en­sem­ble amidst a full en­tourage of In­di­an (Kathak) and African dancers dressed in the na­tion­al colours, aer­i­al dancers, Moko Jumbies, fire breathers, flags and spe­cial ef­fects.

Ricardo Melville, left, strikes a pose with Dil-E-Nadan when he was a member.

PHOTO COURTESY RICARDO MELVILLE

He gave a spir­it­ed per­for­mance in the com­pe­ti­tion which un­fold­ed at Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do, be­fore an au­di­ence of about 6,000—ac­cord­ing to the show pro­mot­er’s fig­ures. He took home a grand prize of $400,000.

Trac­ing his jour­ney, the To­ba­go-born Melville said his tri­umph this year had val­i­dat­ed his years of “hard work” in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try, as a band vo­cal­ist and so­lo per­former. His love for singing ap­par­ent, he hap­pi­ly burst in­to snip­pets of var­i­ous songs while re­call­ing as­pects of his en­ter­tain­ment ca­reer.

Brought to Trinidad while he was a ba­by, and bear­ing a re­sem­blance to his pa­ter­nal grand­fa­ther’s side, Melville was called “Chi­nee Boy” by his fam­i­ly. When he start­ed to sing pro­fes­sion­al­ly, he re­tained part of the nick­name, call­ing him­self “Dad­dy Chi­nee”. He spent his ear­ly child­hood in Oropouche and then Matu­ra with his moth­er and old­er broth­er be­fore go­ing to live with his fa­ther in Tabaquite.

It was at the Tabaquite RC School and Tabaquite RC Church that he start­ed singing around age 13, en­cour­aged by his Un­cle Affie (Alexan­der Luke).

De­spite “trem­bling” and “be­ing very scared” the first time he sang pub­licly, he con­tin­ued to par­tic­i­pate in church events and ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions and soon gained the so­bri­quet “Young Gyp­sy” be­cause of his great ad­mi­ra­tion for the ca­lyp­so bard, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing his Sink­ing Ship days.

But by the sec­ond year when Melville par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Tabaquite Com­mu­ni­ty Ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tion, he had to abrupt­ly change the name be­cause “some­body stole it,” he laughed.

He as­sumed the new so­bri­quet “Young Thun­der”.

Melville made his first pro­fes­sion­al ap­pear­ance at age 18 at a high school grad­u­a­tion. Ob­serv­ing his keen in­ter­est in singing, his now-de­ceased cousin Dawud Orr, who played with An­dre Tanker and oth­er bands, in­tro­duced him to pop­u­lar so­ca band Kalyan.

There, he was trained as a band vo­cal­ist. Sound Rev­o­lu­tion was the next band he sang with.

“One of the biggest times was when I left the coun­try and spent eight months in Cana­da with Moses (leader) and the band. It’s now called Moses Rev­o­lu­tion.

“We did Car­ni­val in Win­nipeg be­cause Sound Rev­o­lu­tion was a big band in Cana­da be­cause of the Dol­lar Wine...yes with Col­in Lu­cas, so I had big stages to sing on, rep­re­sent with the band, and that was a big wow fac­tor for me,” the crossover singer re­called.

Af­ter he re­turned from Cana­da, he linked up with chut­ney artiste Ner­mal “Mas­sive” Go­sine who in­tro­duced him to the chut­ney so­ca in­dus­try and chut­ney band Tr­ishul led by In­dar Kan­hai.

He lat­er joined chut­ney so­ca band Melobugz and con­tin­ued do­ing shows with Mas­sive, trav­el­ling ex­ten­sive­ly.

The Xross Over King moved to the T&TEC Gay­a­tones cur­rent­ly known as “RG The Band”, first en­ter­ing the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch as a so­lo act while a mem­ber of the group. He made the fi­nals with “Chut­ney So­ca Time” writ­ten by Rik­ki Jai (Sam­raj Jaimun­gal).

“It was like wow, I can’t be­lieve I reach to this stage! All of that gave me the strength to con­tin­ue,” Melville said.

Be­com­ing a reg­u­lar at the CSM com­pe­ti­tion, he made the fi­nals on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions. Through singing and writ­ing, he has picked up as­pects of the Hin­di lan­guage used in chut­ney and chut­ney so­ca.

“What I don’t know I google and ask,” he laughed.

Melville spent about eight years as part of chut­ney-so­ca crossover big band Dil-E-Nadan, help­ing to write the Eng­lish parts to songs like In­di­an Girls on the band’s FBI al­bum. Leav­ing Dil-E-Nadan, he formed his own crossover band Hyp­not­ic in late 2006, tak­ing a back seat while guid­ing younger artistes to be lead vo­cal­ists for the next six years. Then, his band fold­ed.

“It was tough; me be­ing an artiste and push­ing out a band. We had sev­er­al hits like Ah Won­der Who and Sam­i­na that were well-played, but it wasn’t work­ing out for me,” he said.

Melville al­so sang with leg­endary so­ca band Roy Cape All Stars along the way. He has trav­elled to North Amer­i­ca, parts of Eu­rope, and sev­er­al coun­tries in the Caribbean as a band vo­cal­ist and as a so­lo artiste.

The en­ter­tain­er said he loves var­i­ous types of mu­sic, but so­ca chut­ney and parang so­ca were spe­cial to him. The Par­ran­dero and This is It singer has been in­volved in so­ca parang from about 2009, hav­ing lent back­ground vo­cals to Scrunter’s Back Yard Jam in that year.

He re­joined the Rishi Gayadeen-led RG The Band as a front­line vo­cal­ist about four years ago and re­turned to the Chut­ney Monarch com­pe­ti­tion—af­ter a hia­tus—around the same time af­ter urg­ings from the band­leader.

Ex­pand­ing on his mul­ti­cul­tur­al in­flu­ences, Melville said his moth­er is of African her­itage while his fa­ther, Fred­er­ick, is a mix­ture of Melville’s East In­di­an grand­moth­er, Lynette Luke and Chi­nese grand­fa­ther, Al­loy Luke.

Ricardo Melville, left, with his former band Hypnotic.

PHOTO COURTESY RICARDO MELVILLE

The pris­tine wa­ters of the coun­try­side beach­es and the tasty coun­try food are as­pects of To­ba­go life he loves.

“When you go To­ba­go is all kind of ways they cook the fish. It would al­so be the pro­vi­sion, crab, dumplings, mack­ies from the riv­er—what peo­ple would call big shrimp; cray­fish.”

On his fa­ther’s side here in Trinidad, it was the large fam­i­ly gath­er­ings for cook­ing com­pe­ti­tions and the spe­cial Ori­en­tal spices his grand­fa­ther (now de­ceased) and un­cles would use to pre­pare their baked fish and wild meat. The fam­i­ly’s in­volve­ment in parang al­so in­spired him.

As to his par­tic­i­pa­tion in an are­na root­ed in the East In­di­an chut­ney tra­di­tion, Melville said he al­ways felt wel­come.

“I’ve been around East In­di­ans so long that I think they ac­cept me.

“I’ve done a lot in this in­dus­try and peo­ple al­ways look for­ward to when Dad­dy Chi­nee com­ing to per­form—wed­dings, shows, any event—peo­ple ac­cept me and give me that love.

“The com­ments com­ing in so far are that I ‘de­serve it’ (the CSM crown), ‘great song’, and that ‘I changed the in­dus­try on that night’ in terms of what I sang. It wasn’t about horn­ing or dis­re­spect to women.

“It was na­tion-build­ing and I am proud of my­self for bring­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent to rep­re­sent all cul­tures and all races to the peo­ple,” he said.

Melville’s wife, Sangee­ta Pe­tite, echoed his sen­ti­ments say­ing his fan­base and the in­dus­try it­self had al­ways been wel­com­ing.

The cou­ple shares daugh­ter Rainelle, 12, whom there are help­ing to pre­pare for her up­com­ing SEA ex­am­i­na­tions.

Melville al­so has an­oth­er daugh­ter Rhi­an­na, 17, from his pre­vi­ous mar­riage, who lives abroad.

The artiste is ex­pect­ed to launch a Latin-so­ca fu­sion song en­ti­tled Mi Corazón with S2M Pro­duc­tions in the com­ing months.

He said he was grate­ful to the pub­lic for its sup­port, his man­ag­er Tri­cia Ramd­hanie and Sun­set Par­ty Pro­mo­tions TT, Ab­bi­gail Christo­pher and the Pre­mala New Gen­er­a­tion Dance Acad­e­my, PDPI Ltd, and Ju­nior Bis­nath.

Mean­while, he looks for­ward to the 103.1FM Chut­ney So­ca Road March com­pe­ti­tion. The event was for­mer­ly based on a com­bi­na­tion of a live per­for­mance score and an on­line peo­ple’s choice tal­ly but will now be judged ful­ly by a pan­el on March 10 at the Na­pari­ma Bowl since it had been post­poned due to the pass­ing of chut­ney and chut­ney so­ca singer Anil Bheem.